Kai Wegner stops appointment of Muslim activist: How the scandal could have happened

It was a rare scandal. SPD Senator Cansel Kiziltepe's attempt to unilaterally and without consultation establish a Senate contact person for anti-Muslim racism for the first time failed due to the CDU majority in the Senate. In the end, Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) called Kiziltepe back. A rather unique event. But questions remain: What kind of office is this, anyway? And who is the person who was supposed to take it on – and then wasn't allowed to?

At the press conference following the Senate meeting on Tuesday, Wegner's press spokeswoman Christine Richter explained why the CDU rejected the appointment of a Senate contact person for anti-Muslim racism. Richter pointed to a high-profile expert commission of the Berlin House of Representatives that is doing "valuable work" on the issue. The goal is to develop and propose further measures against anti-Semitism, racism, Islamophobia, and all forms of discrimination. Richter said they do not want to anticipate their results.

President of the German-Israeli Society: False balance on the issue of Islamophobia

Ironically, the expert commission is considered the political brainchild of SPD parliamentary group leader Raed Saleh, established, among other things, in response to the Hamas attack on Israel in September 2023 and the subsequent Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. Did Kiziltepe intend to devalue the work of Saleh's commission by filling the position? In any case, Saleh had no prior knowledge of the appointment, it was reported on Tuesday evening.

But that's by no means the only open question about the spectacularly failed appointment. For Volker Beck, a former Green Party member of the Bundestag and president of the German-Israeli Society, the term "anti-Muslim racism" itself is problematic, he says. "It's a battle cry that does little to clarify the situation." There's no doubt that Islamophobia and racism are social problems that must be combated. These problems lie elsewhere, Beck says.

In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Beck criticized the imbalance in the appointment of contact persons for the state of Berlin. He explained that, in addition to a contact person for anti-Semitism, there should now be one for anti-Muslim racism. However, Beck added that the topics are "not the same in their semantics or in their actual manifestations, but rather very different."

Beck refers to figures, data, and facts from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. In 2023, a total of 74.01 percent (in absolute numbers: 5,554) of crimes against so-called religious representatives had an antisemitic background, while 22.37 percent (a total of 1,679 cases) were cited as "Islamophobic." By comparison, approximately 0.1 to 0.3 percent of the population in Germany is Jewish, while 6.4 to 6.7 percent is Muslim. This means that Jews are comparatively significantly more likely to be victims of religiously motivated crimes than Muslims.

The question remains as to who she is. Almost nothing is publicly known about Kiziltepe's candidate, Yücel Meheroğlu. According to a brief written biography sent by Kiziltepe's Senate administration, the 41-year-old holds a doctorate in research specializing in racism and prejudice. Most recently, she worked as a research associate at the federal office of the Reporting and Information Center for Antigypsyism (MIA). There, her responsibilities included recording and analyzing racist incidents, monitoring them, and advising those affected.

Meheroğlu studied Turkic studies, history, and German studies at the University of Hamburg. She completed her doctorate at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University of Berlin.

The mere mention of the ZfA in this context is enough to raise eyebrows, as the Center for Antisemitism plays a key role in the heated debate that has been going on for years about the boundaries between acceptable criticism of the Israeli government and more or less blatant delegitimization of Israel or outright antisemitism.

For example, officials of the American Jewish Committee have accused the Center for the Study of Islam for years of neglecting Muslim antisemitism in its work. Moreover, in 2020, ZfA director Stefanie Schüler-Springorum collaborated on a so-called plea criticizing the Bundestag's BDS resolution. The resolution classifies the BDS initiative in Germany as antisemitic and anti-Israeli. BDS stands for "boycott, divestment, and sanctions."

Hot potato: Nancy Faeser had to retract report on Islamophobia

How difficult it can sometimes be to deal with the term "Muslimophobia" was demonstrated last year, when the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser (SPD), was forced to retract a report by the Independent Expert Group on Islamophobia (UEM).

The reason: The report mentioned, among others, the co-editor of the blog “Die Achse des Guten” (The Axis of Good), Henryk M. Broder, the CDU member of the Bundestag Christoph de Vries and the blogger and Islamism expert Sigrid Herrmann (SPD) by name, thus placing them in the context of “Muslim hostility”.

Broder initially filed a lawsuit against his mention and won. In its ruling, the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court ordered the ministry to stop publishing the passages about him, arguing that they violated his personal rights.

The court primarily criticized the fact that the study could be interpreted as an official statement by the federal government. The Interior Ministry was obligated to exercise restraint, objectivity, balance, and "constitutional distance." Faeser was ultimately forced to scrap the report. There has been no further attempt to publish it so far.